Through Heaven's Eyes
by Stars of Artemis
Summary: Hiding from a world secretly at war in a tiny artshop in Rome seemed...boring. Until she was found by the worst possible person. At least, at the time, she had a reason to fight again. But then he had to go and make things all...complicated.
1. Chapter 1

_**Disclaimer; Transformers are not mine. Hope you like this. Ties in the beginning with Zero Gravity and the second chapter of Return of the King.**_

The giant black mass of desert stretched unbroken from north to south, dark against the outline of the navy horizon. The blue sky that skirted the landscape faded to the solid black of midnight above, its endless expanse littered with thousands of cold white stars.

The dessert was an empty place at night; dark, cold, the sands unable to retain the heat of the hard clear day. Nothing moved save for the tiniest breaths of wind stirring up a trace of sand on one of the distant dunes, and a tiny dormouse that scuttled silently across the earth to the shelter of a nearby clump of dead, brittle weeds that rasped gently in the breeze.

Silent. Still. As it had been for thousand years, and would be for a thousand more. The harsh Sahara was one of the last places on earth free from human contact…but even then, it had no defense against what moved in the skies.

The dormouse stiffened as sensed something in the north, pausing in its act of grooming its silver whiskers as a cold breeze rattled the weeds above him and whispered over the sands. The mouse squeaked; its round ears twitched, and then, quite suddenly, it dove for cover under the nearest rock.

A jet blasted overhead, seeming to come out of nowhere, and the sonic scream of a second close behind echoed out all over the land.

The two Raptors gleamed in the starlight; to the world they were just a blur, as the world was too them. One was black and the other silver- the light glinted off the cockpits so that it was impossible to see inside of them. They seemed to be moving fast even for sonic jets- as if they were racing the moon around the earth, trying to stay ahead of the approaching sunrise.

If that sunrise meant- symbolically- seven U.S military jets, then it was a race they were slowly loosing.

The other F-22 Raptors were slowly closing in from behind, just a few hundred yards away. They had formed into a deadly V-shape, and that shape was working, because they were slowly gaining on the jets' tails, despite the fact that there seemed to be an entirely different engine underneath the wings of those planes.

Just a few more minutes, and they would have them.

One of the jets- the black one- seemed to stutter, and a violent shower of blue sparks flew out from underneath its searing wing. The jet dropped a few feet, snarling, before pulling back up, completely level with its companion to an unnatural accuracy.

"Captain, we are closing in." said one of the pilots over the radio, "Do you wish to engage?"

"Negative." responded the pilot at the head of the formation. "Hold fire until we have a closer range. Firing now will only result in waste of missiles."

One of the pilots, a woman by the sound of it, cursed vividly. "We need to take them now, sir!" she exclaimed. "You know how dangerous they are!"

"Denied, Carson!" the captain ordered, "_Hold fire_!"

Up ahead, the jets were tired of hacking into the pilots' radio waves. A strange sound rolled out from the silver one- a deep, bizarre noise that sounded as alien as it was mechanical. The jets flipped over in perfect synchrony and blasted off in opposite directions, effectively vanishing from sight.

"What the hell!" screamed the woman pilot from before.

"Does anyone have a visual?" demanded the captain.

"Negative, I can't see him anywhere!" exclaimed one of the others.

The pale sky suddenly lit up as if it had been set on fire as the very top of the sun slipped above the rocky horizon. It illuminated everything- the endless sea of fiery sand, the distant dunes and the weeds below. A bright light reflected off somewhere to the left, and one of the pilots turned to look out of the cockpit just in time.

"He's on the left!" he yelled, taking a hold of the controls and spiraling downward. "Incoming, nine o'clock."

"Drop!" ordered the captain, and the entire squadron barrel-rolled toward the ground, the giant silver jet's missiles missing them by inches as it blasted overhead.

"Turn around and engage." ordered the captain, taking the head of the flight pattern again. "Fire on hostile at will."

"Captain, what about the other jet?" asked the woman.

"Campbell?"

"I don't see him any-"

A brilliant yellow fire erupted on the right side of the formation as one of the flyers was hit, disintegrating before it even reached the ground. The air rippled behind them as the black jet appeared out of nowhere, and blasted by the squadron, gaining altitude in the sky to loop around them and come in for another pass.

"_What the f-"_

"Teleportation." said the captain. "They know what we're planning by hacking our signals. And our system." he cursed, seeing the crazy numbers flying across his screen. "They're going to access the Pentagon networks if we don't cut them off. Thank god for Lopez. Display frequency across the channel _now_, Campbell!"

Campbell responded, "Roger," and reached up to flip a switch.

The silver jet screeched as a high-frequency, circuit-blasting shriek reverberated over the system and into its hard drive. It twisted in mid air and blasted away, speeding toward the south. The second jet's engines roared as it prepared to follow, only to be cut off by a missile-firing assault from four other flyers, coordinating without the disruption of com link hacks. Then, quite suddenly, the plane disappeared with a ripple.

Another curse from the woman rang out across the network, and the planes slowed down marginally, circling to regain formation.

"You got Screamer, captain?" asked Campbell, falling into the ranks.

There was a moment of static from the other end, before he got a response from the older man. "Negative. Too risky. There was some plane from Taylor Airlines out there- and we don't want this all over the news if it decided to take out a civilian plane to buy time. I got his wing, though. And after all that damage Ironhide pounded into him, he won't be getting far. We'll scout out over the forest later."

Two F-22's came flying from the south, lining up with the formation.

"What about Crosby?" asked one man, after the six jets banked and began traveling north.

"We will recover whatever is left of him once we get back to base." replied the captain grimly. "But I'm going to have Screamer's tailfin for this. And next time, they can't hack our links at all."

"Any damage to the Pentagon files?" asked Carson.

"No idea." replied the captain. "I guess we'll find out soon enough…let's go home. I need to call Lopez. Those things aren't getting into our system _ever _again."

The six jets blasted back the way they had come, and quite suddenly, the roar faded from the skies, and all was quiet again. The only evidence that was left of the battle at all was a smoking heap of twisted metal and ashes lying in one of the dips between the hot dunes, and the slightest of ripples in the sky.

And the only one that bore witness to it was a tiny dormouse, that poked his head out after hours of caution and scampered off, that never ventured into that battleground ever again.


	2. Twisted

Chapter 2- Twisted.

The man across the desk gave her a funny look; as if she had said something inappropriate, or had just asked him about the weather in German. His ice colored eyes, glaring at her from behind rectangular, shiny spectacles, might have held all the contempt in the world for all she cared.

At least she was not forty pounds overweight and very bald.

But then again, she got _those _looks a lot.

"You used to be a _pilot_?" he asked in disbelief.

Gabriella Lopez sighed, running her fingers through her bouncy, dark ponytail. The curls she had inherited from her mama got in her way a lot, but they also prevented her from punching weirded-out people like him square in the face.

"That's right." she managed.

He reached for his bag on the counter with stubby, worn fingers that boasted two golden rings. "Funny." he said curtly. "I've never met someone who went from Army to artist before."

_If only you knew._

"I'm exploring my options." she said shortly, glancing around at the shop. It wasn't very big- but the front wall was made entirely of glass, which let a lot of light in, and sometimes if it was very bright, it almost made her forget her surroundings and feel like she was in the cockpit of her F-22 again, soaring right into the blinding glare of the sun.

"Mm hm." was all he responded, glancing around carefully at the colorful canvasses, the tie-dye ceiling fan, the old vintage desks painted bright colors that held assortments of artists' tools and white-and-black photos, and the large wall hanging that showed the tree of life.

"Anything else?" she asked in exasperation, eager for him to leave. She should be used to it by now- you dropped out of the _Air Force _to be a street artist in Rome? You went from air-high mercenary to stonned-out hippie? The younger ones though she had some deep soul and life-altering transformation involving a terrible bombing, the blood of innocents, and the death of a friend. The older ones thought she was a drop out, or a traitor to her country. Just another never-voting and useless youth of society.

At least the younger ones said something she could laugh at. And Gabriella loved to laugh.

"Hm." he said again, considering something hanging on the Greek-style pillar that towered up to the ceiling in the middle of the small shop. "How about that one?" he asked, gesturing at the small portrait hanging on it.

Gabriella's eyes flickered over his shoulder, and the flat denial was in her eyes before the toneless words even came out of her mouth.

"No. Sorry. That one's not for sale."

A close up picture of a man holding a gun right in the camera's face. And the words in silver above it; _The dove is never free._

She would never forget how much truth those words really had. And she wasn't about to sell the one thing that tied her to her old life to this fat-ass, anyways.

"A shame." he said, considering it. And then, "What about _that _one?"

Gabriella glanced over her shoulder, and the large portrait hanging over the entrance to the back room.

The response was even more immediate than the last one, but different. "Not that one either." she said coldly, "I already have a buyer."

"I could pay higher." he said thoughtfully, considering the dark pink and reddish colors of the wave-like pattern against the white.

_I doubt you could outbid the United States government, abuelo._

Gabriella's mouth curved into a smirk. "Doubt it." she said shortly.

The man sniffed. "Have it your way." he said, gathering up the loud plastic bag in his pudgy hand.

"Enjoy your day." she told him dryly, though the spark of amusement returned to her eyes when he accidentally bumped into the tangled mass of vines from a plant hanging from the ceiling on his way out.

The doorbell chimed, and then it was silent.

Gabriella slid off her stool from behind the glass counter. The only reason the artwork behind her was hanging on the wall at all was to throw off suspicion. Her advisor had told her that maintaining a profile as an artist meant displaying her work- all of it- no matter how top secret. They had managed to install a top-rate alarm system and even a steel door in the back of the shop for her to keep her paintings until the agency came to pick them up, but in the off case someone did break into the bright little shop, it was better to be safe than sorry.

No need for any thieves to steal what was in the room believing it to be of some importance, and sell it to the wrong people who were smart enough to figure it out.

She just had to make sure to _never _allow photography in here.

It was a lonely life.

The bell on the door suddenly jingled- and Gabriella winced. _Not lonely enough. _She turned around, this time to see a small gaggle of tourists looking around like they had never seen an art store before; a woman in a red hat, and a boy with bright, mischievous eyes leading the party.

Gabriella internally sighed. "Can I help you?"

The airport was crowded and loud; the lines at the desks in the waiting room backed up due to a three hour delay of a massive commercial plane and a thunderstorm in southern France. Everyone was waiting in line impatiently; children were groaning, only kept at bay by exhausted parents who handed them bags of chocolate from the nearby gift shop, and workers who looked like they were either going to fall asleep in their seats or slam their heads against their briefcases till they knocked themselves out.

Nobody was happy with the slowly moving black hands of the giant clock whose roman numerals seemed to mock them all, or at the screen overhead that displayed the predicted times of arrival three hours later then they should have been. But the impatience of it all seemed to fall especially hard on one young man in line- a thin guy with soft brown hair and endless blue-green eyes, who was hopping from foot to foot and looked more wound up than the nine-year old boy running around with his third Pepsi in hand, easily staying two steps ahead of his panicking mother as he screamed his sugar high out through the food court.

"Will you stop that?" the woman in front of him finally snapped. She had her arms crossed and her steely blue gaze fixed on the red times; he didn't think she had blinked in the past five minutes.

"Stop what?" he asked automatically, and winced when he saw the corner of her thin pink mouth curl up in a snarl.

"_That_." she said, as he shifted his weight to the foot that was farthest away from her; this time in caution. If a fight broke out in the middle of the line, he didn't want to wind up slugged into the large woman behind them.

"I'm bored." he whined, throwing his head back and shaking the hair out of his eyes. It was way too long for regulations, but Captain Davidson was far too preoccupied with the chase ensuing farther south to notice a wayward pilot's hair, especially when he always had a flight helmet on. "I bet we could change into out uniforms. They might even let us have a discount then."

"Don't be ridiculous." snapped the woman, still staring at the board, as if her will alone could move their flight up an hour ahead. "That makes us extortionists, and that's probably just a little too kinky."

"We should get more credit." grumbled the man softly. "We protect the whole frecking _world_, not just the U.S, and this is how it repays us?" He kicked his black bag, slumped on the ground. "I demand a refund."

The woman didn't respond, but her frown depended, though her glare remained steadfast and unwavering on the board.

"Angela?" The man said suddenly.

"What?" she growled.

"It's not going to blink."

"What?" she asked again, this time a little distractedly.

"The board. So stop staring at it. You're not going to win."

Angela Bradley Thompson finally tore her gaze away from the board. "I know that. But it beats people watching. Not that there's much to watch here." she added in a low voice, eyeing all the businessmen and lack of variety with some distaste. Angela had grown up on a small ranch outside of California as a child, and as a teenager she had lived in New York. On top of that last experience, she was part of the overseas Air Force. They were all used to variety.

And for some reason this place seemed to be lacking it severely.

"Remind me again why we can't just fly?" the man asked in a whiny voice.

"I don't know, James, so for the hundredth time, quit asking me!" she snarled, Angela's famous five-second patience worn out. She turned back to the board again. "Davidson said there was nowhere we could land the jets. There isn't a U.S base outside of Rome, unless you were aiming to go for somewhere else in Italy, and this way we'd be in a lot less danger of attracting attention to ourselves."

"Oh, so this is a stealth op?" James Campbell asked loudly, perking up. "Why didn't anyone _tell_ me-"

"_Shut up_!" hissed Angela, whirling around and sucker-punching him square in the stomach. The woman behind them, now visible because James' good height was doubled as he was bending over in pain, looked at the duo with an expression that was a mix of curiosity and wariness.

"Too much sugar." Angela offered. "He's a little delusional from the jet lag. Sorry."

The woman shook her head, her frizzy, dark orange curls bouncing, and went back to digging for another candy bar in her purse.

"That's why no one told you, idiot." Angela hissed at him, twice as intimidating now that she was taller than him.

"So…it is…operation?" James wheezed, barely looking up and still clutching his stomach.

"Not exactly." Angela offered, leaning back slightly as he began to straighten up. "But Gabby is kind of the key piece in all of this. The only reason we've been beating _them _lately is because of her. If they found out…"

"They'd kill her." James said, his deep eyes suddenly uncharacteristically serious as he gazed at his flight partner. "Okay. So we take public air route because it's less suspicious?"

Angela nodded, rolling her eyes once she had turned her back on him to look up at the board again. James may have been a genius when it came to barrel-rolling in the sky and tinkering with radars, but he was an idiot- not to mention a slight bit clumsy- once he was on the ground.

She supposed it must have had something to do with upbringing- being left with nothing to do but trick the new immigrant nanny that came to watch him every four months since he was two.

On the plus side, he knew scattered bits of words from seven different languages.

"I still don't get it." grumbled James, still rubbing his stomach. "How does a great pilot like Gabriella still manage to be a…you know…artistic _genius_?"

Angela frowned up at the board. That was something even she didn't understand about her best friend- and she didn't like that at all. Angela was a cool-headed, statistics person. She had majored in science and engineering, and could understand a combat situation or an analysis better than a complicated person.

Angela was extremely perceptive. She picked up a lot on people that many would miss- James said she missed her calling as a detective, and offered to buy her a Sherlock Holmes hat for her 27th birthday. Gabriella had said it must be something to do with her icy eyes, and offered to pay for the trench coat.

She had smacked them both upside the head, and told them to forget it. But as usual, Gabby and J were the only people who could make that pilot laugh. And even though James was a bit easier to understand, this whole art thing with Gabriella had completely blindsided her best friend.

And Angela did _not _like being blindsided.

Where had it come from? How long had she been planning this? The day Gab told them what she planned to do, accepting the CIA's offer, had shocked Angela to the point of the whole open-hanging mouth thing. She had been as unaware as everyone else…with her _best friend_.

No, Gabriella was a little too unpredictable then. It was like waking up and finding out that the man you married was suddenly a serial axe murderer…minus the whole gross axe aspect of it.

It was just…surprising, that was all. And Angela didn't like it one little bit.

She was determined to get it right this time.

"You know, she's still the same Gabs." James murmured in her ear, seeing her distress. Angela's frown deepened even more that he had noticed- a sign of weakness wasn't something she liked to be revealed.

"I know." Angela replied, her answer clipped.

James was about to respond to that- when a flickering on the screen of the expected plane arrivals caught his attention, and his mouth fell open. "No. _Way." _he breathed.

Cheers and applause erupted in the giant waiting area, one person even jumped up on their chair and started praising Jesus. Angela allowed a self-satisfied smirk.

"Way to go, Carson." he said, grinning and clapping her on the back.

Angela let the use of her call sign outside of a cockpit slide. "Mind over matter." she said to James' floored expression.

Angela picked up her bag and James shouldered his, and they walked up the line and handed in their tickets for their plane ride, which had just arrived three hours early.


End file.
